Tuesday, February 28, 2012

This just occurred to me as I was responding to a former
student who labeled himself a “youthful idealist” as he objects to our politics
today as being unbalanced. What occurred to me was this question: Why do we
call those who play fast and loose with power and the Constitution “realists?”
I mean, after all, these “realists” came to grief in Vietnam, in Cuba, in Iran,
in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan, as well as in at least several examples of
domestic policies, such as the war on drugs, the war on crime, the war on
terror, and the war on poverty. If these guys keep proposing policies that
don’t work – and I haven’t even mentioned the economy above – why do we call
them “realists?” This would be like calling those humans who think they can fly
and therefore jump off buildings “realists.” This does not make a lot of sense.

I believe this goes back to what George Orwell saw as a
characteristic delusion on modern politicians and political thinkers, viz., their
embrace, even obsession with power. They make the mistake of assuming that
whither things are tending, that the current alignment of forces, of power will
continue into the future, has to continue into the future. So, if the United
States decides to exert its power in Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan, it will
prevail because that is the way “the wind is blowing.” Besides, we have all
these “theories,” like counterinsurgency theory, that “prove” that certain
forms of power will work – even though they haven’t and they don’t.

That they don’t work doesn’t deter these “thinkers” and “actors”
because they can always come up with an explanation for why their exertions of
power failed. They make studies, a lot of studies, to show that if only we had
done “A” or if only we had not done “B”, our exertions of power would have
worked. But they never raise the question: What are the limitations of power?

And despite all of this we persist in calling these people “realists.”
It really is quite mad.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Below is a quote from a speech John F. Kennedy gave while running for
the presidency in 1960, on September 12th to be exact. Recently,
Rick Santorum has come under fire for criticizing JFK’s views on the separation
of church and state, that is, the separation of religion and politics. In one
fact check column, it was argued that Santorum attributed things to Kennedy
that he did not say. But regardless of the details or the words Kennedy said,
it is clear from the following that Kennedy had a very different view of the
separation of church and state than Santorum and other “conservatives” today.

Kennedy, Sept. 12, 1960:
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute;
where no Catholic prelate would tell the president — should he be Catholic —
how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to
vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political
preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his
religion differs from the president who might appoint him, or the people who
might elect him.

Note well
that Kennedy said that he favored an America where “no church or church school
is granted any public funds….” There are not too many today who would favor
such an arrangement as this. And note he also argued that he preferred an
America where priests did not tell presidents how to act or, it seems
analogous, tell parishioners how to vote. And he did say that the separation
should “absolute.”

So, perhaps
Santorum did not quite get Kennedy right, but he and Kennedy are definitely not
“on the same page” when it comes to their respective understandings of the
separation of church and state.

One provision in the Constitution that is too often overlooked: "no religious Test
shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under
the United States." So, from the viewpoint of the Constitution, religion is irrelevant when it comes to being qualified to hold any office or trust "under the United States." Or to put this a bit differently: When it comes to exercising official power in the United States, one's religion, including whether one is religious or not, is irrelevant.

Friday, February 24, 2012

The hypocrisy of “freedom loving” “conservatives” is all-too-evident in
Virginia these days. And in Virginia, Martin Luther King Day is officially
known as “Lee, Jackson, King Day”! I kid you not.

“The Daily Show” host [Jon Stewart] discussed that aspect of the legislation
before the General Assembly —
complete with an image of the ultrasound probe — then ran audio, video and
newspaper clips of ultrasound bill supporters speaking out against other forms
of perceived government intrusion.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Just a really good quote from Wendell Berry. As with Plato, the state of a community reflects the state of the soul. This is what the "realists" ignore.

“The disease of the modern character is
specialization. Looked at from the standpoint of the social system, the aim of specialization may
seem desirable enough. The aim is to see that the responsibilities of
government, law, medicine, engineering, agriculture, education, etc., are given
into the hands of the most skilled, best prepared people. The difficulties do
not appear until we look at specialization from the opposite standpoint – that
of individual persons. We then begin to see the grotesquery – indeed, the
impossibility – of an idea of community wholeness that divorces itself from any
idea of personal wholeness.” Wendell Berry, The
Unsettling of America, p. 19.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Discussion continued
of the state of our politics today. Good discussion. Or so it seems to me.

Former student:

“well, i would also
argue that the media are complicit in this, too. i have not yet seen a single
reporter ask a serious question to a candidate. for example: contraception.
george stephanopoulos, during one debate, spent a good fifteen minutes on that
same topic. or this ever-present question: if you are elected president, what
will it feel like? what does it mean to you?

“i disagree with your
use of the term oligarchy, but, for whatever reason, people do not seem willing
to engage in serious issues.

“i would say that we
no longer have to fear the schoolmaster state. it has already arrived.”

My response:

Oh, to the contrary:
People are prepared to discuss important issues and vote on them. It is the
oligarchy that represses them. Ever heard of the Tea Party. Or Occupy Wall
Street. However misdirected their anger might be, they realize they are being
hosed by the few wealthy, the oligarchy. And other people, often the young, are
prepared to listen to Ron Paul and his critique of our imperialism. And I have
discovered that almost anyone who reads Howard Zinn's book A People's History
of the U.S., likes it, provided of course they have not been
"educated" by the likes of Mahoney/Dobski.

But I also wonder why you worry about what you call "the schoolmaster
state" when we are bombing and killing people throughout the world in
order to "project our power abroad" as "the realists" like
to say? You know, Jon, Aristotle's political classification is much better,
more illuminating than such categories as "schoolmaster state." And I
have to say if you are unwilling to use the word "oligarchy" than you
have as little to contribute to a useful discussion of our political situation
as Peggy Noonan, and she contributes very little.

Finally, of course the media is complicit in this. The media merely serves the
oligarchy, because after all it is the wealthy few who control it, just as they
control the political process as well - constitutionalized by Supreme Court in
Citizens United, which is another issue the people are willing to take on while
the establishment is not. Is either party criticizing this decision? The only
one in the media who is dealing with this is Colbert! Obama did criticize it
once, a high profile once, but of course has done nothing since about it and
rarely, if ever, talks about it.

Given the overwhelming power of the wealthy few, how can you not say this is an
oligarchy?

Friday, February 17, 2012

“But the reason it is a farce is not because of
"negative ads" or any other technique. The reason it is a farce is
because we don't have two parties but only one, the oligarchy, and so they are
forced to fabricate differences to make it seem like there are two parties.
Peggy Noonan knows nothing about politics, that is, real politics and as a
result is utterly unable to make any contribution to understanding our
situation. This column is an illustration of this: Stephen D. and Abe did not
engage in "negativity" because they had real issues to debate and
were willing to debate them. Just like the Federalists and the
Anti-Federalists. Debate is farcical when it is pretend debate, which is what
we have now. No one, with perhaps the exception of Ron Paul, is raising any
issue of fundamental importance. I mean, come on: Mitt Romney's religion is an
issue? It is not a real issue. And contraception is a real issue? I don't think
so. It is all smoke and mirrors and, hence, farcical.”

This is my response to a former student who sent me a column
by Peggy Noonan in which she concocted a negative ad on behalf of Stephen
Douglas about Abe Lincoln. The student involved saw that our presidential
campaigns are farcical, but like Noonan seemed to want to attribute this to
certain techniques, like “negative ads.” My argument is that our politics is
farcical not because of negative ads but because no one involved in our
political process is willing to debate real issues, as Douglas and Lincoln were
willing to do. Hence, because no one wants to debate the real issue, which is
of course the issue of oligarchy versus republic, our political discourse is
farcical, focusing on such non-issues as gay marriage [already settled] or
contraception [when only the smallest minority practices non-contraception] or
Romney’s religion [you’re upset he’s a Mormon? Really?]. There is no debate
over Israel’s pending attack on Iran or on our policy in Afghanistan or on
anything else of significance. Or, to put it differently, when there is
actually only one political party, the oligarchic party, then it is necessary
to formulate phony issues, and the result is farce. And, as is usual in
politics, farce is often followed by tragedy. And, no doubt, if tragedy ensues,
we will shake our heads and wonder: WTF?

Thursday, February 16, 2012

First, I learned that a goodly number of young Americans,
and probably older Americans, don’t care if we go to war with Iran or if we
support a war against Iran by, say, Israel. What can be said of this? Not so
much. But I shouldn’t be surprised insofar as our society has become so
militarized or more militarized. These youths don’t really know an alternative
and, of course, have been propagandized since 9/11 to think of the U.S. as a
victim nation.

Second, as I lectured on our institutions, viz., the
Congress, the executive, and the courts, it struck me with particular force how
central LAW is to our way of being in the world. I had noticed this before but
not with the same clarity and I found myself speaking about the differences
between “outlaws” and “criminals,” how the latter don’t represent a grave
threat to the nation because, as odd as it sounds, criminals operate within the
law, unlike outlaws. Criminals break
the law but outlaws live outside the law; you might even say outlaws reject the
legitimacy of the laws and perhaps of law itself.

A clear example of someone who was both a criminal and an
outlaw was Malcolm X. As Malcolm Little, he was a small time criminal, selling
some drugs, committing burglaries and other felonies, for which he eventually
went to prison. There he became a Black Muslim – and later a Muslim – and he
became an outlaw. And, of course, even though he no longer did drugs or
committed crimes, Malcolm was deemed – and in fact was – more dangerous in his
later manifestation than his earlier one. He was no longer a criminal, had
become an outlaw, and hence was now more dangerous than previously. His death
should come as no surprise to anyone; it did not surprise him. [I also argued
that Martin Luther King, Jr. was on his way to becoming an outlaw when he was
assassinated. Not all protest is of the outlaw variety and many outlaws live
lives without actually protesting. Nothing especially dangerous about protests,
at least about most protests.]

Finally, I tried to demonstrate to the classes how laws are
overrated in their importance. Using the example of Columbine, which they
remembered, I used the examples of the calls for more gun laws after Columbine
and that of a working class mother in Boston who said on the news: “If my kid
is building a bomb in my garage, I know about it.” My students recognized this
latter activity as parenting and they knew that there will never be, can never
be a law to replace parenting.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

First part: No matter if Romney or Santorum gets the
nomination, the Republicans will lose. The “conservatives” won’t support Romney
because he is not “conservative enough for them and they will feel betrayed by
the failure to nominate Santorum. But Santorum cannot carry enough “moderates”
to win and many Romney supporters will not support Santorum with sufficient
intensity or at all.

Second part: When the Republicans lose to Obama, the
“conservatives,” especially those of Tea Party credentials, will get the blame
because (a) they did not support Romney with sufficient intensity or (b)
because they are the reason Santorum got the nomination.

So, all Republicans like Boehner have to do is to sit back
and watch the debates and the primaries, enjoying the fight which they know is
futile for those they want to “purge” from the party or, at the very least,
“discipline” in what they call “the art of politics.” And besides, what is so
bad about Obama from an establishment Republican point of view? And by keeping
him in power for another four years, they can campaign against him and his
“socialism,” thereby setting up what will be a closely fought election in 2016
when the Tea Party and other such “conservatives” will hardly be a force to be
reckoned with.

Further, this is fine with the – establishment - Democrats
as they get another four years of Obama and will have a decent chance of
prevailing again in 2016. And all the time until then Obama will perpetuate the
prevailing power arrangement and revive the failed economic system to keep it
on life support for a bit longer.

Machiavelli wrote a play, La Mandragola , where through the
use of fraud everyone satisfies their desires, including adultery.

“One of the main themes in the comedy is
the use of fraud, as none of the characters' objectives could be accomplished
without it. Machiavelli makes it clear that fraud is acceptable, so long as it
furthers a worthwhile cause. In Mandragola, almost every character uses fraud.”

This analysis depends upon deeming
adultery “a worthwhile cause” as the play revolves around the efforts of a
young man to sleep with and seduce the beautiful wife of an old man, with the
help of a friar and the wife’s mother! He succeeds.

“The end of the play is a happy ending,
as all characters are satisfied with the
new arrangement: Callimaco has the object of his desire whenever he wants,
Ligurio has a place to stay and eat, Nicia will no doubt have an heir, Lucrezia
has a new love, and Timoteo has his money and the satisfaction of knowing that
he outsmarted everyone else. The fact that all this deception has turned into a
happy, peaceful state shows an interesting view of Machiavelli's world. This
says that fraud is acceptable when it attains positive ends. In fact, as long
as
the results are pleasing to someone, it appears that fraud is a valid means of
attaining them. As the friar remarks, "in all things one must look to the
result."

NB: “all the characters are satisfied” but none is virtuous.
Quite opposite in fact, even the friar. “A happy, peaceful state” is possible
on the basis of fraud, a result and a means that seems to describe our current
situation quite well. But then it is questionable whether the happiness and
peace we seem to have is genuine and durable. My suspicion is that it is not.

Friday, February 10, 2012

“On January 23rd, the Obama administration charged
former CIA officer John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information
to journalists about the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspects. His is just the
latest prosecution in an unprecedented assault on government whistleblowers and
leakers of every sort.

“Kiriakou’s plight will clearly be but one more battle in a broader war to
ensure that government actions and sunshine policies don’t go together. By now,
there can be little doubt that government retaliation against whistleblowers is
not an isolated event, nor even an agency-by-agency practice. The number of
cases in play suggests an organized strategy to deprive Americans of knowledge
of the more disreputable things that their government does. How it plays out in
court and elsewhere will significantly affect our democracy.”

This is part of an agenda, embraced by both Republicans and
Democrats, to insulate the government from examination, critical examination.
It includes a decades long project of rendering the impeachment provisions of
the Constitution null and void. The latest piece of this project was the joke –
the joke is on us, the people – of the Clinton impeachment which, of course,
the Republicans never wanted to win [as if they wanted Al Gore to be able to
run as an incumbent president!] and which has neutered the impeachment
provisions by virtue of its clear abuse of those powers. These guys, these
oligarchs are shrewd and one victim has been the Constitution.

Here is a question I don’t hear raised much: How come almost
all attempts at dealing with the current economic “crisis” are presented as
attempts to “get us back on track?” That is, almost everyone assumes and talks
as if the current situation tells us nothing about the worth, the desirability
of our current economic “system.” Or to put this slightly differently, almost
no one seems to think that the current situation is evidence that the current
“system” needs to be changed in basic or fundamental ways. Perhaps this is only
true of “mainstream” opinionating but it does seem to be prevalent.

Maybe this is why the establishment reacted so strongly to
the Occupy Wall Street “movement;” in fact, so strongly that it seemed strange
given what would appear to be the rather insignificant numbers of those
protestors/citizens. That is, the perceived threat was that this movement would
successfully challenge the prevailing framework of the debate over what should
be done now, viz., how can we restore the prevailing economic order. If
successful, then those who hold the power in the current system would be
dislodged from their positions of power and prominence. And, it seems to me,
that this threat is always one that causes anxieties in those with power, not
only in the “real world” but in academe as well.

Or maybe those who are the powerful currently know how thin
is the veil that covers over, hides the real character of their system. That
is, they know that it would not take much to reveal the oligarchic character of
the system, thereby condemning that system to the dustbin of history.

In any case, it seems to me that our debate about our
situation is about as constrained as it could be. But then some would say there
is little to be surprised at here as that seems to be the state of our
discourse more often than not. And insofar as this is true, then all the talk
about the intensity of our discourse, how intensely “ideological” it is, is really
just another cover story for what is, in fact, a rather boring, narrow, and
unenlightening discourse that is controlled by the few at the expense of the
many.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Isn’t the resolution of the current dispute over whether
religious institutions like hospitals and schools must cover contraceptive
expenses pretty simple? The government has said that these institutions must
provide such insurance for reasons of women’s health. It is the same reason
that the government says that certain Native American religions cannot legally
use peyote or other mind altering drugs in their religious ceremonies, as well
as the same reason why certain religious practices like allowing venomous
snakes loose during religious services are not allowed and are in fact criminal
offenses. It is also why the government can force parents with religious
scruples against such requirements as vaccinations to have their children – and
probably themselves – vaccinated. It is also why the government can impose
child labor laws on those who would violate them in the fulfillment of their
religious obligations.

This is what the government does all the time, has done since
the Constitution was adopted, and was doing even before it was adopted. One of
the least controversial ends of governmental action is preserving and
protecting the health of its citizens, employing even coercive measures to do
so successfully, even when these measures trample on the consciences of some of
those citizens.

But here is another puzzle. If those in the employ of such
institutions share their principled objections to contraceptives then what is
the problem? Obviously, if this were the case then those institutions would not
have to cover any such expenses because no one would be buying contraceptives!
Of course, this is extremely unlikely because as polling makes obvious, almost
no women in, say, the Catholic Church object to using contraceptives [98% is
the figure often cited] and overwhelming majorities are in fact using them [68%
of Catholic women, 73% of Protestant women, and 74% of evangelical women]. Now,
there’s a shock: Overwhelming numbers of women use contraceptives despite the
fact that the religious institutions they belong to are against or frown on
such use! Go figure!

But the Republicans have a political winner here, for sure! Hardly.
It is almost as if these Republicans want Obama to be re-elected, perhaps
because their wives prefer him on issues such as this to those who would
endanger their health while trying to save their souls, almost all of whom are,
I am suspecting, men! Perhaps these churches ought to spend more time trying to
convince their members of the sinfulness of contraceptives – oh, I would love
to hear how that campaign goes – than trying to stop the government from doing
what government has been doing since, well, forever!

Monday, February 6, 2012

Once again, having taken up the subject of Rick Santorum
with a friend, he, Santorum, deserves more attention. The complaint was made
that Santorum’s views on what we label “homosexuality” have led to his being
“victimized” by means of derision. Of course, this is, to the extent true,
unfortunate and needs correction.

However, because it does not involve derision, I stand by my
earlier argument that Santorum, by seeming to address only the question of gay
and lesbian marriage, avoids the real question, viz., whether those who are gay
or lesbian can be fully virtuous human beings.However, worse than this is that Santorum does not really avoid this
question but implies, without saying so, a negative answer to this question.
When Santorum and others, like Bill Bennett, argue that marriage, traditional
marriage, lies at the foundation of Western – and, hence, superior – Civilization
and that gay and lesbian marriage would undermine that institution and, hence,
that civilization, they are saying that gays and lesbians are subversives. So, to
satisfy their sexual desires, the implication is, they are willing to undermine
the achievement that is Western Civilization. They are subversives, selfish and
sexually unrestrained subversives.

Interestingly, this friend agrees with my arguments against
Santorum’s imperialism and sees that it is logically inconsistent with
Santorum’s “pro-life” pronouncements on the issue of abortion and euthanasia.
However, Santorum’s imperialism and his rejection of the legitimacy of gays and
lesbians are of a piece. That is, Santorum, like many others, is imperialistic
because he perceives it to be “manly” and, hence, of a piece with “traditional
morality” as Santorum understands it.Traditional morality is predominantly “masculine,” and anything that
threatens masculinity threatens traditional morality – which like traditional
marriage lies at the base of Western Civilization. As a result, Santorum
dislikes feminism and the feminization of society, which latter is advanced by
the legitimation of gays and lesbians. Gays are not “real men,” that is, they
are not the kind of men who made and who will defend and perpetuate Western
Civilization. Legitimation of gays then leaves us open to being destroyed by
other “real men,” say men like Islamic fundamentalists who put no store in
either feminism or homosexuality. It is interesting, as an aside, that those
who see the West as having “invited” Islamic fundamentalists to attack us by
seeming weak or “feminized,” espouse a view of virtue that reflects the view of
virtue espoused by these fundamentalists. But, more to the point here,
Santorum’s imperialism and his rejection of the legitimacy of gays and lesbians
fit together nicely as for him imperialism is part and parcel of our traditional,
masculine morality, a morality that is threatened by those who are not “real
men.” So just as we must embrace war to prove we are "real men," so too we must not kowtow to those who are not "real men," the gays.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Here is a
thought perhaps: The most enduring, the most constant aspect of politics and
political life is injustice. That is, injustice is far more common than justice
in politics. Injustice may be said to characterize political life, which is one
reason why decent people are not apt to go “into politics.”

Here is
another thought perhaps: Those who are considered “the greats” when it comes to
political analysis, those like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Machiavelli, Hobbes,
Locke, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and others agree that injustice is the most common
aspect of political life. However, the difference between those called “the
ancients” and those called “the moderns” is that the former seek for ways to
tame or redeem political life, through philosophy or education/playfulness or
religion, while the latter, despite the prevalence of injustice, embrace
politics and the political life unashamedly. For the former, the prevalence of
injustice in the political arena leads to a search for alternative arenas where
human beings are not, necessarily, tainted by injustice. For the latter, the
prevalence of injustice leads not to a search for alternative arenas but to
what is presented as a “manly” or “vigorous” or even “existential” embrace of a
political life, snubbing one’s nose, at it were, at injustice. As Machiavelli
wrote, what the prince needs to learn is “how not to be good” and to use this “talent”
as needed. For Machiavelli, it was the
desire to be good that needed to be tamed, not the desire to do injustice.

And isn’t
this the key to what we moderns call “realism?” The modern realist says: “Oh,
wouldn’t it be nice, wouldn’t the world be a nice place if we could afford to be just all the time? Oh, but
we cannot afford that, anymore than
we can afford to create an economy that is humane and just. We must embrace
injustice, not blink when we have to incinerate lots of human beings and do
other things that are, let us admit it, unjust by any normal reasoning. By our
embrace of injustice, we prove our virtu,
which is not to be confused with virtue
as understood by those who contemplated imaginary republics.”

But modern
realism is only realistic if we make certain assumptions, most importantly, if
we assume that we humans are not harmed, irreparably and deeply, by doing
injustice. If this assumption is wrong, than what parades itself as “realism”
is not “realistic.” And don’t the facts that we can imagine a just political order and
that this imagining appeals to us, that it draws us to it, prove that we know,
deep down, that doing injustice is wrong, deeply and irreparably wrong? That
is, our souls long for justice just as they long for beauty, for community, and
for redemption, confirming rather than denigrating our imaginations and
teaching us what is most fully human.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

“It’s a sunny little dream I have of a happier mankind. I
couldn’t survive my own pessimism if I didn’t have some kind of sunny little
dream. That’s mine and don’t tell me I am wrong: Human beings will be happier – not when they cure
cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when
they find ways to inhabit primitive communities. That’s my utopia. That’s what
I want for us.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Ah yes, “primitive communities”: a strange sounding
proposition. But is it so strange? Whenever I teach American government and
teach about the Anti-Federalists and their argument that small republics are
more humane than large republics, I point out to the students that when I grew
up in the small and by today’s standards “primitive” Metuchen, New Jersey, my
mother knew that I had gone where I was not suppose to go by the time I got
home one night. It was not a bad place but I was not to go there and, of
course, did anyway. But as I point out to students, we had mothers but today we
need cameras to spy on us. I suspect that this “primitive” arrangement is
better than the “modern” arrangement we have today. And I bet you can think of
other examples of the advantages of “primitive” arrangements that no longer
exist.